Letters Home: Street, Somerset

The Strode Theatre is quite a large modern theatre, purpose built, and part of a college campus.

Transcript of Podcast

The Strode Theatre is quite a large modern theatre, purpose built, and part of a college campus. It’s kind of large, about the same size as the Theatre Royal in Margate, but it has a slightly more intimate feel to it, it is slightly more focused which is nice.

The audience are really nice. We are here partly because this area of the country has just lost a lot of their arts funding and so the Globe being here is in part to show support for that. But also because our director Dominic Dromgoole has lots of connections here at the Strode Theatre. So it is a really warm, responsive and supportive audience. I mean not without criticisms, but it is a happy environment for us to be in.

There seems to be a real delight to see us here. I think both here and in Margate it struck me that these are audiences who want to support their theatre spaces and so they really take delight in the fact that the Globe has come to them. And, of course, they are particularly delighted that it’s Hamlet!

There’s a kind of friendliness and openness in this production because we are all rushing around, playing lots of parts and changing on stage. It’s something that we are getting better at as we go along, kind of befriending the audience, just opening up to them right from the word go. It’s interesting, there is a transition point where you sort of move out of the rehearsal room in your head, starting to collaborate with the audience if you like, and that has started to happen here, which is a nice feeling. And it will of course have to happen in the Globe Theatre also.

We are going to such different spaces, so I find it difficult to plan for any one venue, although the Globe is always in the back of my mind because it’s our first semi outdoor space. For me, I think really in the rehearsal room I played only for the rehearsal room, with an awareness vocally of needing to be bigger for the touring venues. Actually here in Street and also in Margate it really maintains the intimate, enclosed feel that our set can have. It has quite an interior feel to it, the play and our production has that. The set sort of embraces us a little bit and I think draws the audience in.